Financial Industry: foreclosure statistics

In his book, Thompson's search for the American dream ends at the burned-out husk of a former nightclub, a fitting metaphor for a city that went from the fastest-growing to the most-foreclosed city in America in the space of a year. As our article and its accompanying video document, today more than 80% of Vegas mortgages are underwater, and empty or abandoned home pepper the city.

Sunshine and Stricken Suburbs

Vegas is hardly the only region whose housing sector fed on dreams. In Florida, the third-most foreclosed state, dreams have fed the area's growth ever since Ponce de Leon ventured there in search of the fountain of youth. Our piece from Florida explores a different kind of dream: an uncompleted "Italian resort themed" suburban neighborhood that's now filled with cows. In order to save on taxes in the now-unprofitable real estate venture, the area's developer had the area reclassified as farmland and moved in livestock. As for the people who live there, the swanky neighborhood they signed on for is now a barbed-wire bonanza.

And dreams continue to be deferred across the country. In Modesto, Calif., Todd Lappin documents empty streets, hastily boarded-up windows and stagnant swimming pools in the fourth most foreclosed state. With his images of rusting barbecues, overgrown yards and abandoned homes, Lappin sketches a near-apocalyptic landscape, the scattered leavings of a once-posh suburban development.

Meanwhile, a promising development in Vickery, Ga., has started transforming into a money pit. To the dismay of the area's residents, the bankruptcy of Vickery's developer and rising foreclosures have sent neighborhood fees through the roof, even as property values have tumbled. As the author notes, it's unclear if the bucolic neighborhood will ever recoup its lost property values.

Small-Town Destitution

One doesn't have to travel to a sun-kissed wonderland to find a dream that came crashing down. As David Schepp documents in "The Housing Mess Hits One New York Town Hard," Mount Vernon, a scruffy suburb of New York City has also watched its property values plummet. With a majority African-American and Hispanic populace, the working-class city was heavy targeted by subprime lenders, a factor that helps explain why prices have fallen by 37% across the city and by as much as 72% in some neighborhoods.

Washington (CNN) – It is not enough to say the economy is "struggling," "hurting," "sluggish" or "slow."

In this week's American Sauce, we nail down the specifics on our economic health: income, spending, GDP and jobs (now and future). And we look at a core problem, still: housing. We'll introduce you to a woman who's part of the next large group to face foreclosure (conventional loans on moderate homes). She personally demonstrates that all that talk of loan modifications has led to a tangled system of obstacles.

Click here to listen, or keep reading for a quick, bulleted list.

American Sauce's economic check-up:

* Personal bankruptcies: 1.5 million individuals applied for bankruptcy in the year between Sept. 2009 and Sept. 2010. That was a nearly 14 percent increase from the year before.

* Business bankruptcies: 58,322 businesses applied for bankruptcy in that time. Notably, that was a slight decrease of less than 1 percent from the year before.

* Bankruptcy stats: Look through them for yourself at http://www.uscourts.gov/Statistics/BankruptcyStatistics.aspx

* Unemployment rate: 9.8 percent in November, up from 9.6 percent in October.

* Those on unemployment rolls: 15.1 million people.

* Those not counted in unemployment rate: Up to 5 million. That includes as many as 3.5 million who have maxed out unemployment benefits and 1.3 million workers who have stopped filing paperwork for unemployment benefits, saying they do not believe they can find a job and have given up.

NOTE: there are no reliable figures on how many "99'ers" exist. From the Labor Department, we know 3.5 million people have fallen off the unemployment rolls but we do not know how many of them have found a job and how many are still unemployed.

* Unemployment Stats: Here are the latest – http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

* Personal income: Went up slightly in November, rising 0.5 percent in November.

* Personal spending: Also increased last month, going up 0.4 percent.

* Income/spending stats can be found here from the Bureau of Economic Advisors: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm

* New home sales: Dropped another 8.1 percent in October. It was a drop of 28.5 percent from a year before and a plummet of 80 percent from the height of the housing boom.

* New home prices: Average sales price was $194,900 in October, 13.9 percent lower than in September.

* Existing home sales: Slid 2.2 percent in October.

* Existing home prices: Averaged $170,000 in October.

* More on new home numbers from CNNMoney: http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/24/real_estate/new_home_sales/index.htm

* More on existing homes from CNNMoney: http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/23/real_estate/home_sales_slow/index.htm

For more stats, including the latest figure on Gross Domestic Product, click here for this week's American Sauce podcast:

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

foreclosure statistics

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